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arXiv · 1607.03838

STARlight: A Monte Carlo simulation program for ultra-peripheral collisions of relativistic ions

Spencer R. Klein·Joakim Nystrand·Janet Seger·Yuri Gorbunov·Joey Butterworth
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Abstract

Ultra-peripheral collisions (UPCs) have been a significant source of study at RHIC and the LHC. In these collisions, the two colliding nuclei interact electromagnetically, via two-photon or photonuclear interactions, but not hadronically; they effectively miss each other. Photonuclear interactions produce vector meson states or more general photonuclear final states, while two-photon interactions can produce lepton or meson pairs, or single mesons. In these interactions, the collision geometry plays a major role. We present a program, STARlight, that calculates the cross-sections for a variety of UPC final states and also creates, via Monte Carlo simulation, events for use in determining detector efficiency.

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Spencer R. Klein, Joakim Nystrand, Janet Seger, Yuri Gorbunov, Joey Butterworth. 2016-12-20. STARlight: A Monte Carlo simulation program for ultra-peripheral collisions of relativistic ions. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpc.2016.10.016

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